Resident Evil

When was the last time you sat in front of your monitor and were genuinely frightened by something apart from your own reflection? Unless you've been playing single-player Quake recently, the chances are that your spine hasn't been effectively tingled for months; although many games try their damnedest to create an atmosphere of brooding menace and lurking horror, genuine poo-on-pant moments are disappointingly rare. Which is just one reason why the imminent arrival of Capcom's Resident Evil is worth celebrating.

You're doubtless familiar with the title already - the game has been browning the knickers of PlayStation owners worldwide for quite some time now, in the process racking up the kind of sales figures that Hot Cake manufacturers can only dream about. Now it's on its way to the PC. And the best news of all is that, thanks to the cunning deployment of much additional PowerVR-friendly coding, the PC version is all set to make the PlayStation original look like a manky old Spectrum game (well, almost).

Heavily influenced by Alone In The Dark, not to mention countless schlock-horror zombie flicks, the 3D polygon combat-and-questing nature of the gameplay marks an unusual (and heartening) change of direction for Capcom, a company previously famed for their StreetFighter series of 2D beat 'em ups. The storyline is simple: there's been some kind of catastrophe at a top-secret Biotech lab, hidden deep in the middle of the countryside. The government has already sent in a troop of gung-ho buckshot-guzzling commandos (known as S.T.A.R.S. - Special Tactics and Risotto Squad), but oops-a-daisy, they've ail disappeared. Time to call in the back-up team - which, naturally, is where you come in.

Players can choose to play as Chris (macho, clean-cut, eye for the ladies), or Jill (sassy, good at picking locks, one drink and she's anybody's), with the 'female' mode of play being - as per usual - slightly easier. The ensuing drama is a sort of cross between 'Scooby Doo' and 'Dawn of the Dead': eerie haunted-house creepiness coupled with explicit exploding-head viscera. Holed up in a creepy mansion-cum-research laboratory, you'll have to explore every nook and cranny - solving a series of taxing puzzles en route - in order to find out just what exactly has been going on. To make life difficult, the chambers and corridors are populated by a veritable 'Muppet Show' of shambling, flesh-gnawing zombies, oversized animals and other bloodthirsty aberrations of nature, all of which display an unsettling desire to deck the halls with your internal organs. So if you don't want your intestines re-employed as carnival bunting, you'd best have your wits about you.

Shock Corridor

I've already mentioned Alone In The Dark, and indeed it's hard not to. Resident Evils structure is incredibly similar. The entire operation is viewed from a variety of different (fixed) camera angles, with static, pre-rendered backdrops making up the scenery. Rather than feeling restrictive, however, this technique lends the proceedings a distinctly cinematic appearance - especially since the viewpoints have been expertly selected for maximum atmospheric effect. At times, the air of menace is nigh-on palpable. Animation throughout is equally superb (gritty realism being the order of the day) and some of the beasties in the game's closing stages are scary enough to leave your ringpiece performing countless tiny gulping spasms, rather like the mouth of a large fish that's found itself washed up on the beach on the hottest day of the year (was that really necessary? - Ed.).

But it's the sheer amount of vivid gore that's truly shocking. The design team have clearly viewed the full canon of George Romero 'Living Dead' flicks, and decided that grand guignol is the way to go. Heads pop open like gristle-packed water balloons, limbs are blown away in sticky showers of blood and bone, groaning zombies feast upon fallen victims like hogs scoffing at a troughful of oat slops; this is not a game for the children.

Crue and Impoved

So, what about those PowerVR-specific improvements? Well, the Windows 95 version of Resident Evil I tested, whilst as yet unfinished, was noticeably superior to the familiar PlayStation edition. The animated characters moved with greater fluidity (at a rough guess, I'd wager that the frame rate has been improved by at least 20%) and were of a far higher resolution, with facial expressions and detailed clothing very much in evidence. For the final release, we are promised extensive use of the PowerVR card's hardware-based light-sourcing - which means mucho impressive misting and shadowing effects - and since it's a native Windows 95 'application', a near-as-dammit resizeable view. Hopefully, they'll also do away with some of the original's irritants as well - the clumsy savepoints, the confusing and unwieldy inventory system, and the intensely annoying pauses which occur as you move from one 'room' to another (during which you're treated to an initially tension-building, eventually frustrating sequence showing an approaching doorway). Here's hoping they don't change the appallingly stilted voiceovers, though. I always thought they added to the game's already twisted appeal.